The Hunger of the Soul

An inner life at this stage, after six years of intense and honest struggle, is something like this – there will be three or four days, or a week, when God and rapture are immediately available. All you have to do is hold thought steady for an instant and relax any physical or mental tensions that might serve as obstructions, and the current of bliss surges through you and spreads out like a delicious fire to the very smallest capillary. Your mind, your spirit, stands spellbound with awe and gratitude. And these moments are not always calculated.…

But then there will come a period when, after being caught up and held by joy, you feel as though the same hand threw you down pitilessly for some ruthless, unavoidable purpose. No physical pain of being hurled to the ground can compare with the mental anguish of being deprived of a bliss that you thought was yours now to keep. No frustration can equal the frustration of those moments set aside for contemplation, now so empty of any results of any kind. If it is not deliberately a part of a plan to humble you, nevertheless it serves that purpose. You search and wonder and think what you did wrong to turn you off the path that was so clear and sure a few days ago. And you pray. You who have never really prayed before, you pray with all humility. And then wait. There’s nothing else to do.

Then this strange phenomenon – sometimes you get up from the most frustrating session of silence to find joy welling up in you as soon as you start some activity. You sit down for meditation – nothing. You get up to work and there it is again, like someone playing a joke on you.
_{N. Mayorga, The Hunger of the Soul: A Spiritual Diary}